The Fritz Leiber Megapack Page 5

  M’CasIrai carefully tilted the bottle. From the seemingly sealed neck an amber liquid poured.

  “Afterward you can serve yourself, gentlemen,” he said, indicating the four glasses with courtly awkwardness. “Mister J’Wilobe has something to tell us.”

  Hand shaking a little, Inscra tossed his drink. Heshifer sipped appreciatively. J’Wilobe lifted his to his lips, sniffed it, looked around suspiciously, hesitated, set it down.

  “You all know that there are forces working against us,” he began abruptly. “Though some of you don’t like to admit it.” He glared at Heshifer, who shrugged blithely. “Secret, underground forces, bent on upsetting the social order, on destroying the present government, and especially on sabotaging the war. There is evidence that similar forces were active to some degree during past wars. They could have been brought into the open long before this, if there had not been so much objection in some quarters to the unlimited questioning of suspects which I urged—the employment of emotional urging and similar methods of persuasion.”

  “You know I do not like to see people treated that way,” said M’CasIrai gently. “Though, of course, if the safety of the world and the glory of Man are at stake…and if there is a threat to the young men who are giving up their lives…”

  “Naturally any opposition must be liquidated,” said Inscra sharply, “if it exists.”

  J’Wilobe smiled. “The opposition exists. It is only the strangeness of its methods—the puzzling quality of its strategems—that keeps most individuals from becoming aware of it.” He looked around with a veiled contemptuousness, then said suddenly, “Who would suspect—gifts? I mean, if the gifts were perfectly okay and each happened to be the thing its recipient most wanted. Yet gifts can be deadly. You don’t give drink to a drunkard just before the day’s work. Especially you don’t give it to a reformed drunkard. Nevertheless, within the past two weeks dozens of such ‘gifts’ have been made, always anonymously, to some of our highest executives and most trusted subordinates. There is, in my own case, a matter of chess sets.”

  Heshifer muttered something that ended with “…as impossible as telepathy,” then snorted, “If that’s all you have to tell us—”

  “It’s only a beginning. Next among these nuisance tactics of the opposition, conies—voices. Voices in the dark or over dark teletactors, voices dubbed into reading tapes, unplaceable voices heard for a moment in crowds—all reminding the individual of unpleasant incidents that happened in his childhood, incidents he wants to forget, or incidents that never happened but that the voice is trying to convince him did.

  “Yet another secret weapon—monotony. Lights that begin to blink, sounds that begin to drone, taped words and sentences that repeat themselves over and over.

  “Think how such ‘harmless’ means can be used to distract men, to upset them, to ruin their efficiency!

  “Finally, something you all know about—this epidemic of what we’ve called convulsive accidents. Cases of mild poisoning and electric shock, with the victim suffering muscular spasms and going into a hazy and unrealistic mental state that sometimes lasts for days. There have been altogether too many of those ‘accidents.’ It’s as if there were a silent wolf pack around us—dozens of the red-eyed beasts—”

  He broke off to look at Inscra. The General Secretary had just given an abrupt nod, and his eyes looked more than ever alive—or whatever it was. His voice was like them.

  “I think I see what you’re getting at, J’Wilobe. I’ve come across similar cases myself, and I believe now that you are right in considering them significant. What is more, I can add another type of occurrence. Several workers in one of my subdepartments have been troubled by what we called overtiredness. They gradually become slow in their movements, their eyes seem to glaze, they go into what you could describe as a mild trance. In that trance they give utterance to irresponsible, foolish ideas. For brief hazy periods, they doubt things which should not be ever doubted—even war. I have paid no attention—these days, a certain amount of mental fatigue is taken for granted. In one case, though, I remember that an analysis of the blood happened to be made, and traces of a primitive chemical noted—lysergic acid. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now…”

  He broke off and restlessly reached for the bottle—just at the moment Heshifer happened to do likewise. The smaller man was ahead of him, so Inscra set his glass on the table. As Heshifer picked up the bottle, the small gray thing fluttered from his hand to the floor. Instantly Inscra shrank back, repeating his former erratic behavior. There was a moment of confusion. Heshifer set his foot on the thing, muttered a quick “I’m sorry,” stooped, picked it up, shoved it in his pouch. Then he poured the drinks, handing Inscra his.

  As they settled back, M’Caslrai spoke. He had been sprawling back in his armchair, listening carefully, making no comment.

  “Mister J’Wilobe, that’s a mighty interesting matter you’ve been narrating to us, and one we’ve got to act on right quick, but I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of it. You see what’s happening—and you’re right in thinking that it’s hostile. Yes, you can bet you are—but you don’t yet see the why.”

  With almost a twinkle in his eye, he turned to Heshifer. “I’d have thought you’d have spotted it. After all, you’re Secretary of Minds. But no, it would be unfair to expect any of you to get it. I never would myself, except I like to poke around in the byways of history. And that’s where you have to poke this time, boys—way back in the twentieth century, old reckoning. Mighty interesting times…though not as much as the nineteenth.…”

  His voice was both droll and dead serious as he continued, “In those days they didn’t treat deviants and eccentrics as we do now. They had a lot of queer methods, some barbaric, some rather fanciful. I happened to read up on them. They had a thing called hypnotism, a little like our mental persuasion. A way of opening someone’s mind to suggestion, chiefly through the skillful use of monotony.

  “Then there was psychoanalysis—a prying into the depths of the victim’s mind; a searching for his earliest experiences, to be used as levers to change his attitudes.

  “Occupational therapy was another. Like the other methods, they used it on the people they called insane. It was a matter of getting the person to do something he liked to do, something that would occupy his mind—you presented him with a well-chosen ‘gift.’

  “Mustn’t forget shock treatment, of course. That was a prime favorite of theirs for the insane, and pretty barbaric. Electric or chemical shock, to dredge up forgotten thoughts and emotions.

  “Or what they called truth serums. Chemicals designed to let down inhibitions, to make the victim speak out his hidden thoughts.

  “Reckon you get it, gentlemen?”

  The silence lasted. Inscra looked stupefied. Heshifer half-befuddled, half-incredulous. While J’Wilobe’s reaction was closer to anger.

  “Do you mean to tell me that the opposition thinks we are ‘insane’?” J’Wilobe pronounced the archaic word distastefully.

  M’Caslrai nodded. “That’s the way I figure it.”

  “And they’re treating us as such? Trying to ‘cure’ us?”

  “That’s about the size of it, Mister J’Wilobe,” said M’Caslrai mildly.

  “But…but…” The thick, mumbly quality of Inscra’s words focused attention on him. He looked more than stupefied now. He looked drugged.

  “What I want to know…” He stumbled again.

  “His eyes!” breathed J’Wilobe. “The truth serum!”

  Over them, a few minutes ago so unpleasantly alive, there had fallen a veil.

  He managed to finish:

  “…is, are we really? I mean, are we really insane? Tell me, someone, are we?”

  CHAPTER IV

  The entry-indicator blinked as Heshifer bustled into the limited elevator.

  “Anyone in
your family get a death notice?” he asked conversationally.

  The fat operator shook his head. “But I got a nephew who did.”

  Heshifer clucked sympathetically.

  “He’s a crazy kid,” the operator volunteered. “Be the making of him, except…”

  “Yes, of course,” said Heshifer gently and leaped into abstraction.

  Plummeting from the eyrie atop Supracenter toward the deepest basement, the elevator accelerated, then achieved such a smooth and steady speed that it seemed to stop.

  The Secretary of Minds looked the perfect pedant. Judging from his vague eyes, pursed lips, and jutting beard, he might have been thinking of something highly obscure or of nothing at all—in no case anything practical.

  He swung around. Save for himself and the operator, the cage was empty. Restlessly he walked to the stair, popped up far enough to survey the second floor of the elevator.

  With a shrug he resumed his meditations. But one might have noticed the faintest of frowns troubling his tufty white eyebrows.

  The elevator stopped. Again the indicator blinked as, with an amiable but abstracted nod, Heshifer stepped out and turned sharply to the left.

  The operator craned his neck curiously and took a step sideways—then recoiled, clutching his shoulder.

  There had been no second passenger, the indicator had not blinked, but his eyes, watching the resilient flooring a few paces behind Heshifer, filled with horror. In a panic of haste he shut the door and started back up.

  Like a self-important little mole returning to his lair, Heshifer hurried along the lonely corridor until he reached the insulated precincts of the Deep Mental Lab. As he scuttled through the file room, he blinked familiarly at the clerks, who were busy getting taped transcripts of brainwave records for mental dossiers of deviants and troublemakers. A large number of such dossiers were being requested by psychologists at war-reception centers.

  Inside his private office, Heshifer’s manner changed. The blink and bustle dropped away, leaving a soft-footed, enigmatic watchfulness. After a few minutes efficiently spent in teletacting requests and instructions, he slipped through an inner door.

  He had gone fifty feet down a narrow gray corridor when, without warning, he swung around. This time he did not bother to mask the suspicious frown. For ten seconds he stood motionless, his eyes roving over the empty corridor behind him, his ears drinking in the faintest sounds. Arriving at a decision, he returned to his office and searched it thoroughly. Then he set auxiliary electronic locks on the outer and inner doors and, with a shrug, started once more down the narrow corridor.

  He did not notice the faint imprints that appeared and disappeared in the flooring a dozen feet behind him.

  After a short walk he paused and traced with his forefinger a design on the blank wall. He ducked through the doorway that suddenly yawned.

  The secondary corridor descended at a gentle angle. Some hundred feet from the entrance a barely audible clink brought him to a stop. A section of wall beside him became transparent, revealing a young, vigilant face.

  “The tunnel’s clear?” asked Heshifer.

  The watcher nodded.

  “All electronic barriers set? No visitants for the Old City ahead of me? No indications of spy-beams?”

  More nods answered him.

  “Thanks, doc,” said Heshifer.

  The transparency became a blank wall. Heshifer hurried on.

  The imprints followed him. There was no clink as they passed the critical point.

  Heshifer emerged on a small platform in a chamber of moderate size. Beyond the platform were two gleaming metallic troughs, which led off side by side, into the mouths of twin tunnels. In the troughs were cradled a number of small cylindrical vehicles.

  Heshifer opened the port of the nearest and climbed in. Almost silently, with swift smooth acceleration, the vehicle glided into the tunnel and whisked out of sight.

  Nothing happened for perhaps a dozen seconds. Then—no one appeared, but the port of the second vehicle opened and, after a brief pause, closed. Softly the vehicle started forward.

  CHAPTER V

  Norm looked up doubtfully at the girl in green. He was still uncertain whether to take her idly-tossed revelations as confetti or grenades. Coming here had been a confusion of screeching alleys, ruinous basements, ambiguous passageways, a careening ride inside a metal mole, until he had stumbled out into the final surprise of soft silent corridors lined with flowers. His mind still fluoresced with it.

  Nevertheless he was sure of one thing: that he felt more it home in this strange little subterranean room than he ever lad in his own dwelling.

  The girl in green swung her legs from a table near the archway. It was obvious that she was aware of their trimness. She looked at him innocently, like an elf on the witness stand.

  “You mean,” he fumbled, “that you consider yourselves attendants in one huge insane asylum?”

  She grinned approvingly. “Except that the lunatics hold the balance of power. And so we have to walk very softly. Or else—it really doesn’t matter—we’re the insane ones, bent on warping the minds of the majority. We’re monomaniacs on the topic, I warn you of that. And with all the languorousness of monomaniacs.” She suddenly looked at him like a short-haired cat. “What’s the matter anyway? Beginning to doubt that a world which devised war could be anything but insane?”

  “Of course not, but in spite of what you started to say about your organization’s long historical background, it all seems so…”

  “Hit or miss? We don’t live up to your idea of a powerful secret society?”

  “I guess that’s what I mean.”

  She smiled.

  “But look at the casual way you picked me up and started to tell me things,” he protested. “How do you know I won’t betray you?”

  “You’d prefer a lot of mumbo-jumbo—oaths, tests, initiations?” she inquired solicitously. “It wouldn’t occur to you, I suppose, that we might have been watching you for a long time? Or that any organization is strong only insofar as it can act on the spur of the moment?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And, as for betraying us, where are we now?”

  “Under the Old City.”

  “But where?”

  “I don’t know. It was dark, and there were those crazy tunnels.”

  “Exactly. And who am I?”

  “You said to call you J’Quilvens.”

  “Yes, but who am I? Where would you find me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You see. You wouldn’t make such a valuable traitor after all.” She smoothed her green slip. “Besides we have reason to trust you. You passed a test when we first met.”

  He shook his head. He was beginning to like her very much. “You’re wrong there. I was just fighting in self-defense. And Willisoun wasn’t after you.”

  She smiled. “You’ve a lot to learn about your precious potential brother-in-law. You didn’t even know that he worked for J’Wilobe.

  “He’s quite a problem child, Willisoun,” she added dreamily. Then, after a moment, “You’re in love with his sister?”

  “Look,” said Norm quickly, “you were going to tell me about the background of your movement.”

  J’Quilvens smiled, lit two smolder-sticks, tossed him one, leaned back, sniffing the aromatic smoke, and casually began. Very much like a small girl uttering whatever fancies came into her head—the muse of history’s brat tattling.

  “It started in the twentieth century, old reckoning. There was still some insight then into the psychological state of the world. It was before the big propaganda engines went wild—and a person still had some idea of what was coming into his mind and from where. They realized that certain nations were for all practical purposes insane—paranoid, regressive, schizoid.

 
; “But the larger truth was ignored. Only a few men realized that abnormal psychology was far more fruitful than the normal variety for the simple reason that it was truer. That from the beginning man had behaved abnormally, believing fiercely in things that didn’t exist, positing all sorts of weird forces for which there wasn’t a grain of evidence, exalting his prejudices and eccentricities, his little private experiences, into vast, cosmic fabrics of morality. That to a large extent all civilization was just one gigantic case history.

  “Of those few doubtful men, a handful happened to contact each other. They shared their insights and grew a little more certain of their ground. They said, ‘We’re not like ordinary psychiatrists, who seek only to make sound maniacs out of sick maniacs. We presume to view man against the cosmic background, his littleness and misery and hunger, his boastings and cringings, his tricks and pretenses, his terrors and hallucinations, his kickings and squirmings, his shrieks and snarls. We want to teach him to laugh at himself. And someday, in spite of himself, we’ll drive him sane!’”

  For a moment Norm felt that she was looking through him.

  Then, leaning forward, lightly resting elbows on knees, she continued quietly, “Whenever they had the time and opportunity—for all of them were tied to irksome routines—they investigated. Some of them studied the modern symptoms of the world’s madness, probed the symbolic mass-dreams hidden in art, propaganda, and advertising. Others concentrated on the traumas that had occurred while mankind was groping from barbarism to civilization—the wars, enslavements, and superstitious delusions that had warped civilization’s childhood. Still others tried to determine the prognosis of the ailment.

  “The prognosis was negative. Society took several wrong turns. Under the pressure of a ruthless new puritanism, the promising spirit of scientific skepticism was mummified into learned specialities. Basic questions were dodged so often that a general inferiority complex came into existence. Pretense took the place of progress. Fear was enthroned.

  “At times the tiny enlightened minority met to exchange their augmented information. Differences of opinion rose. Some boldly attempted to set up the psychiatry of history as a new branch of knowledge. This resulted in a split. Those who resisted realized that their knowledge would merely be assimilated into the general insanity and become a worthless pedantry. As indeed happened—you can still find traces in the present philosophy that a certain degree of irrational eccentricity, within strict social limits, is desirable.”